De‐legitimizing hostility and strengthening joint agency: Lutheran inter‐religious commitment today

The ELCA Declaration of Inter‐Religious Commitment is an important instrument for mainstreaming inter‐religious engagement in local communities and diverse ministries. This article assesses this recent policy document and highlights how the text engages Lutheran theological reasoning on “the neighbor” for a profound understanding of God's grace, theologically de‐legitimizes hostility and exclusion, and strengthens joint agency. This resonates with current concerns in the global Lutheran communion and the wider ecumenical movement.     

A Time-Varying Measure of Dyadic Synchrony for Three-Dimensional Motion

We propose a novel approach to the analysis of synchronized three-dimensional motion in dyads. Motion recorded at high time resolution, as with a gaming device, is preprocessed in each of the three spatial dimensions by spline smoothing. Synchrony is then defined, at each time point, as the cosine between the two individuals’ estimated velocity vectors. The approach is extended to allow a time lag, allowing for the analysis of leader-follower dynamics. Mean square cosine over the time range is proposed as a scalar summary of dyadic synchrony, and this measure is found to be positively associated with cognitive empathy.     

Muslims Love Jesus,Too? Corrective Information Alters Prejudices Against Islam

The present study examined whether prejudices towards Islam can be altered through corrective information. A total of 1715 German participants were first asked to appraise their opinions towards Judaism, Christianity and Islam (the ratings pertained to progressiveness, tolerance, peacefulness). Subsequently, questions regarding knowledge about religious topics were posed to participants. Questions were selected to elicit common prejudices pertaining to Islam. The correct answers were then displayed along with detailed explanations. Finally, participants were asked to rate their current opinion towards the three religions once again. Opinions towards Islam were largely negative at baseline but improved significantly after presentation of the correct answers. The present study suggests that prejudices against Islam are partially fueled by knowledge gaps.     

Unpleasant stimuli differentially modulate inhibitory processes in an emotional Go/NoGo task: an event-related potential study

Threat stimuli typically elicit a psychophysiological response pattern supporting the organism's preparation for active defence. Differently, blood stimuli prompt a distinctive autonomic response pattern and sustained processing, which do not call for clear-cut mobilisation for action. However, the contribution of motor disposition in these response patterns remains unclear. One way to address this issue is to investigate whether threat and blood stimuli differentially affect the active suppression of an ongoing motor activity. Thirty-two undergraduates were presented with threat, mutilation, pleasant, and neutral pictures in an emotional Go/NoGo task. The amplitudes of the NoGo-N2 and NoGo-P3 components of the event-related potentials were analysed as indices of conflict monitoring and inhibition of motor response, respectively. Reaction times to Go trials were significantly faster for threat than for mutilations. The NoGo-N2 was significantly larger to threat than to mutilations, whereas the NoGo-P3amplitude did not differ between the two conditions. These findings suggest that threat stimuli facilitated the execution of a prepotent response and enhanced conflict monitoring when action must be withheld. In contrast, blood stimuli did not either promote action in the Go trials or increase conflict in the NoGo condition, suggesting a response pattern compatible with defensive immobility.     

Social learning modulates the lateralization of emotional valence

Although neuropsychological studies of lateralization of emotion have emphasized valence (positive vs. negative) or type (basic vs. complex) dimensions, the interaction between the two dimensions has yet to be elucidated. The purpose of the current study was to test the hypothesis that recognition of basic emotions is processed preferentially by the right prefrontal cortex (PFC), whereas recognition of complex social emotions is processed preferentially by the left PFC. Experiment 1 assessed the ability of healthy controls and patients with right and left PFC lesions to recognize basic and complex emotions. Experiment 2 modeled the patient’s data of Experiment 1 on healthy participants under lateralized displays of the emotional stimuli. Both experiments support the Type as well as the Valence Hypotheses. However, our findings indicate that the Valence Hypothesis holds for basic but less so for complex emotions. It is suggested that, since social learning overrules the basic preference of valence in the hemispheres, the processing of complex emotions in the hemispheres is less affected by valence.     

Involuntary autobiographical memories in and outside the laboratory: How different are they from voluntary autobiographical memories?

In two studies, we compared the characteristics and retrieval times of involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memory under controlled laboratory conditions. A new laboratory task of involuntary autobiographical memories involved detecting vertical lines in a stream of stimuli with horizontal lines (an undemanding vigilance task) and recording any involuntary memories during the session. The majority of these memories were reported as being triggered by irrelevant cue phrases presented on the screen. Voluntary autobiographical memories were sampled via a standard word-cue method in Session 2. The results showed that involuntary memories were more specific and were retrieved significantly faster than voluntary memories. They were also more likely to be triggered by negative cues, whereas cue valence did not have any effect on the number of voluntary memories. Furthermore, laboratory involuntary memories did not differ from naturalistic involuntary memories recorded in a diary by the same participants (Study 2). Taken together, these results have important implications for current theories of autobiographical memory, and they open up interesting avenues for future research.     

Missed opportunity for creating value in negotiations: reluctance to making Integrative Gambit Offers

In the present study we address a multi‐issue negotiation agenda, where several issues are under consideration and parties have different priorities among these issues. We suggest that in such agendas loss aversion and within issue anchoring may constrain the configuration of offers that parties propose to each other during the course of negotiation. We specifically focus on offers in which negotiators self‐propose to give the other party more than was demanded on one of the issues, while still maintaining or improving their overall value. We term such offers Integrative Gambit Offers (“IGO”s) and show that although making such offers improves integrative negotiation outcome, the frequency of making them is relatively low, and does not increase as negotiators gain experience with the task. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of scenery, lighting, glideslope, and experience on timing the landing flare

This study examined three visual strategies for timing the initiation of the landing flare based on perceptions of either: (a) a critical height above ground level; (b) a critical runway width angle (Psi); or (c) a critical time-to-contact (TTC) with the runway. Visual displays simulated landing approaches with trial-to-trial variations in glideslope, lighting, and scene detail. Twenty-four participants (8 private pilots, 8 student pilots, and 8 nonpilots) were instructed to initiate the flare when they perceived that their TTC with the runway (30 m wide by 840 m long) had reached a critical value of 2 seconds. Our results demonstrated a significant effect of flight experience on flare timing accuracy and dominance of the height-based strategy over the runway-width-angle and TTC-based strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).     

Religious identity development of adolescents in religious affiliated schools. A theoretical foundation for empirical research

The question, how religious affiliated schools for secondary education shape religious education and what effects this education has on the religious identity development of pupils, is relevant in a time when the position of religious affiliated schools is highly disputable. In earlier empirical research on religious identity development of adolescence, hardly any attention was paid to the theoretical framework of this question. Therefore, connections are sought with the identity theory of Erikson and with operationalizations of his theory by Marcia and others. The key concepts are ‘exploration’ and ‘commitment’. Religious identity development is seen from a pragmatic perspective in which the transactional relation of individuals and environment is stressed.